Highly Notorious Monsters

[Alhanelem]

Obviously a lot of people hate the idea of HNMs but it's honestly some of the best experiences I ever had in FFXI. This is my outlook on it.

Most of us don't hate HNMs, we just hate the waiting game. I'd LOVE HNMs if it was all about the NM itself and the gear was rare and amazing because the fight was hard. The only reason I didn't like FFXI's HNMs is because you spent most of your time waiting. Yes, if you got creative you could ensure the time wasn't totally wasted, but for the most part, that's what people did: wait. 960 posts later and I still dont understand why people think having to not play the game for 30 minutes, check the game for 30 seconds to see if the NM pops, then go back to not playing the game and repeat that several times is good game design. Yes, I suppose it is one way to ensure that gear is rare, by making it so no sane person would be willing to not play the game they paid good money for for several hours just to for a *chance* to fight an NM that has a *chance* to drop the rare item.

I just don't see any of that as necessary to either have nice gear rewards or a competitive spirit/atomsphere.

I seriously think it's going to be a game where you can get some of the best gear with only playing 30 min to an hour at a time. That is what people want right? It's sad but true.

I don't understand why the best gear in the game should only be accessible to people who play the game like it's a job and not like it's an actual game. It's absolutely unhealthy when a game requires you to play it as many hours a day as you would work a job. Why can't gear rarity come from challenge rather than waiting forever and ever for a mob to spawn?

Honestly FFXIV already did a decent job of that with the primal fights. Despite their best efforts, some people just couldn't beat garuda, or hard rivenroad. They just aren't good enough and that's okay. It's a lot better than not even having a chance because you don't have the time to waste being idle for hours and hours.

I had a lot of fun battling some of FFXI's hardest HNMs. I just didn't have fun sitting around waiting for certain ones to pop when there were a lot of other things in the game that i could have accomplished. Tiamat was one of the best ones- for a while people didn't really understand the exact pop windows/times and for a while it didn't matter, because Tiamat was a challenge when it was new and it was up all the time because it was a tough fight. Vrtra is another example of that.

The "3 kings" as we called them were changed to be force pops instead of timed pops with spawn windows, and the funny part is this actually made the items more rare- proof that you don't have to have spawn windows and long timers to have gear that not everybody can get.

[Blackpearlguy]

The "3 kings" as we called them were changed to be force pops instead of timed pops with spawn windows, and the funny part is this actually made the items more rare- proof that you don't have to have spawn windows and long timers to have gear that not everybody can get.

You know what this is also proof of? The majority of people liked HNM and it wasn't a bad way to disperse rare gear! It's one of those things you either hate it or love it.

[Alhanelem]

You know what this is also proof of? The majority of people liked HNM and it wasn't a bad way to disperse rare gear! It's one of those things you either hate it or love it.

Actually, no. The majority of people did not like this system. The majority of people did not even play this system. Technically, the majority of people who play an MMO don't even reach the max level- but I don't count that category as part of the community- just pointing out the fact that we people who like to think we're a majority on this or that actually never are.

One single segement of players out of the thousands and thousands on each server played this content. please don't make a small minority sound like a majority. Other people went to HNMs because they felt compelled to do so in order to get competitive items- not because they actually liked the content itself.

As I said in my previous post- The HNMs themselves were great. I don't hate them at all. The ridiculous mechanics involved in getting the chance to fight them is what I don't like. You don't need to have people sitting on their ass not playing the game to have rare encounters or rare item drops. You just don't. You're deluded if you think having 150 people sit in a small room waiting up to three hours for an mob to decide "Oh hey, there's 150 people in my lair, I'll show myself now so I can get my ass handed to me" and then having a maximum of 18 of those people vying for the item that probably won't drop is good game design.

Remember, just because we did something doesn't mean we really liked it. A small portion of HNM campers relished the thrill of competition (since there was little other way to compete directly with others in the game), and another small portion that enjoyed the ensuing drama and accusations of botting being flung around. Most of us just wanted a ridill or abjuration bad enough to put up with the bullshiat and didn't actually have fun with the content itself.

World spawn bosses (what people here call HNMs) are fine. hours of 30 minute spawn windows are not. Have the HNM, ditch the spawn windows, and just have it pop randomly over time or at set intervals. That immediately solves my main grievance. pop windows are just completely unnecessary. If you know a ToD, you should just go there when the time comes, have it pop, either claim it or don't, and get your reward or don't. There's no good reason to potentially make people wait 1-3 more hours on top of that.